With the increased concern for energy conservation in recent years, general consumer's awareness of energy conservation has been raised. For example, general consumers prefer to buy electrical appliances with low power consumption. There has been proposed an appliance control system (cf., JP 2006-332974 A). The appliance control system performs centralized control of plural electrical appliances installed in a residence. The appliance control system reduces total power consumption of the electrical appliances in the residence. Hence, the appliance control system can conserve energy.
However, in such a residence, various types of electrical appliances such as a lighting fixture, an air conditioner, and a refrigerator are installed. Hence, to reduce power consumption, it is necessary to perform energy conservation processes respectively peculiar to electrical appliances. For example, a lighting fixture performs an energy conservation process of dimming control. An air conditioner performs an energy conservation process of increasing (or decreasing) a desired temperature.
Thus, to reduce total power consumption of plural electrical appliances, a user is required to know, for each electrical appliance, how much power consumption is reduced by performing what kind of energy conservation process. For example, to reduce the total power consumption of all of the electrical appliances by 200 W, a user should select one or more from the electrical appliances and also select one or more from the energy conservation control processes such that the reduction of 200 W is achieved. The user should also transmit instructions indicative of the peculiar energy conservation control processes to the respective electrical appliances. Consequently, the user is required to perform such a troublesome procedure.